Since starting my master’s program, I have come across the term ‘critical’ in relation to design more than a few times. It feels like a term meant to empower designers to express concerns beyond the field through design, which left me wondering: what are the true costs of being critical within this field?
In my bachelor’s, I faced the issue of criticality in design for the first time. During an accreditation by an external committee, the program I was enrolled in was advised to “more explicitly develop the critical thinking skills of students in the Design program”. The head of my department rephrased this as an issue of a “too soft” environment. We were told that if the next accreditation in two years wasn’t granted, the courses might lose the right to issue legally recognized diplomas, which would affect us in our third year. The educational board started a two-year development process, organizing events to understand the artistic climate. When the committee returned to see how their feedback had been taken into account, pairs of students from the design programs were asked to sit before council and testify the progress made; a classmate and I included. The results were positive, they saw a different academy than two years before.
This process showed me that high-quality art academies are asked to impose a certain critical standpoint on their students. We questioned this with fellow students many times, regularly talking about how, for many, design is also a form of expression, something to find joy in, while letting go of the harsh inner critic for a moment. Roland Barthes expresses this beautifully in ‘Camera Lucida’, where he speaks of the ‘uneasiness of being a subject torn between two languages; one expressive and the other critical’. The ability to speak these two languages has often led me to a state of not-making, afraid of what I impose on the materials I use. My harsh inner critic can burn down ideas before I have even started designing. It is at these times that I started to question: Why is this criticality needed at all?
In her talk ‘Critical of what?’ Ramia Mazé suggests three ways to look at criticality in design: in relation to individual practices, in relation to disciplinary discourse, and the use of design as a tool for expressing critique. The last one acknowledges a power of design: not only to function within its own discipline, but to create a space where the visual and material means of design can be used for public critique.
For me, being critical towards and for society placed me in a position where I felt valued. During my first internship, the owners of the design studio expressed that their position as designers was a privilege, enabling them to look at standardized processes with fresh eyes, and giving them the capacity to question them. They were open to seeking new possibilities, unconstrained by traditions or customs, which often lead them to new or different places. It felt special, and even though I knew that they had been in the field for longer than I had lived, I felt there was a chance I could do this too. But I also saw the price they paid, which were hard working conditions: overtime, being underpaid or unpaid, taking a two-year hiatus from designing to write grants, and often being away from home for residencies. Not only was this price worth it for them, but they were also in the conditions that allowed them to pay it.
When I finished my graphic design bachelor’s and granted the work field a look, I worried that a graphic designer was all I would ever be. Becoming the kind of designer I had seen during my bachelor’s and internship, one who changes their environment for the better, felt impossible when I realized I was supposed to be designing ads, posters, and brand identities to make money. The hierarchy imposed when a client enters the picture suddenly changes the affordability of criticality. I tried to develop new skills, use materials and styles related to the business I was creating for, just for the client to pick the design that I thought was the worst.
To fit job offers, I had to let go of the theoretical tools and skills I gained during my education and narrow it down to the creative style and practical skills I had gathered. I felt my passion shrink into new confines and realized that graphic design became a box I barely fit into. I longed for a place without reductions and limitations, where design still meant engaging with topics I care about, while voicing concerns from within the field.
Who is allowed to practice this form of criticality after leaving the educational system? Afonso Pereira de Matos expressed these same questions during his 2022 graduation, where his project ‘Who can afford to be critical?’ raised questions about affordability, class, and labor among designers. It shines a light on the often invisible conditions that precede critical design. This revealed to me all the opportunities I had been granted, not only through my family’s stability, but also through the work I did alongside my studies. Being a barkeeper meant I could sustain my creative work: conditions I had never been critical about, but simply lived through. While design education and discourse celebrate ‘criticality’ as empowering, in reality the costs, risks, and practical constraints of being a ‘critical designer’ often outweigh the ideal — making true critical practices unaffordable for many.
The feeling of wanting something that embraces my tendency to critique and research persisted and pushed me to pursue a master’s, one where both tendencies are central. Through this choice, I am prolonging the situation where one language feeds the other, where my critical side sharpens my expressive one, and vice versa. Or maybe I am only delaying the moment when one must give way.
Perhaps this is what Barthes meant: the uneasiness of being torn between two languages is not something to resolve, but something to learn to live inside. Maybe being a ‘critical designer’ does not mean perfect balance, but learning how to speak in contradiction, to keep questioning while making, to keep making while questioning.
Still, I wonder: who can afford to hold both languages open? Whose work supports it? Whose life makes space for it? And what might we need to let more of us stay here a little longer; fair pay, more time, more honest clients?
I don’t know yet if I will pay the cost, or if I will find a way to make the cost lighter. Maybe the true cost of being critical is not losing the joy of making, but learning to carry both, the critique and the joy, even when they feel impossible to speak at once.
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References
Barthes, R. (1981). Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. (R. Howard, Trans.). Hill and Wang.
Mazé, R. (2016). Critical of What? [Speech]. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/3507655/ Critical_of_What
Pereira de Matos, A. (2022). Who Can Afford to Be Critical? [Graduation project]. https:// www.designacademy.nl/page/550/who-can-afford-to-be-critical